I have been involved, in the gun business, one way or another, since 1964. Luckily, I didn’t usually depend on it for a living because if you want to make a million dollars in the gun business, you usually have to start with two million. But there’s nothing about the business I don’t know.
I have published fifteen books on guns and I’m writing another book right now. I self-publish my books because nobody’s really interested in gun books anyway and I need another IRS-990 like I need a hole in my head.
I have also published more than 1,800 blogs on this website, have been profiled in The New York Times and The New Yorker Magazine and blah, blah, blah, and blah. Big deal.
In other words, I know a little bit about guns and because of what I know, I try to write and publish correctives to the mistakes made by advocates on both sides of the gun debate.
The debate breaks down to an argument about the social utility of guns. One side, the gun-owning side, insists that guns protect us from crime and threats to our personal security, so having access to a lethal consumer product is a good thing. The other side says that most guns are used to kill and injure either the gun owner or someone else and access to such lethal consumer products, on balance, is not a good thing.
The gun argument waxes and wanes but is usually driven by mass shooting events. The first event was when Charles Whitman killed 16 people from the tower at UT in 1966, which carried over to the passage of the gun-control law in 1968. The second was the Columbine massacre in 1999, which made Clinton try to push more regulations down the throats of gun makers, an effort which failed. The last, which was also the worst, was Sandy Hook in 2012, which also failed to produce any federal legislative response at all. The Sandy Hook event did, however, result in a lawsuit by a brilliant, young lawyer named Josh Koskoff, which found the gun maker liable for injuries caused by his gun.
I’m neither surprised nor shocked by the reaction of Gun-nut Nation to these events. After all, the job of organizations like the NRA and the NSSF is to sell guns. And if you think there’s a single gun owner who doesn’t know that his gun represents a risk, then you have never talked to a gun owner, okay?
Which is why the pro-gun folks aren’t concerned about gun violence because they know what can happen if a gun gets into the wrong hands. And why should they be blamed for the behavior of people who shouldn’t be allowed to get their hands on guns? There’s no gun violence problem in this country according to the NRA. There’s a problem because nobody wats to enforce all those gun laws already on the books.
As for my friends in Gun-control Nation, they finally got what they have been dreaming to get for the last twenty-five years, namely a resumption of gun research funded by the CDC. And the head of the CDC has even stated for the record that gun violence is a public health ‘threat,’ which is why the CDC and NIH recently awarded $25 million to folks who will now try to figure out how to reduce violence caused by the use of guns.
One of the CDC grants will pay for an ER doctor who claims to be a ‘4-H certified gun trainer,’ whatever that means, to go around and talk about gun safety to kids who bring their little 22-caliber rifles to 4-H club shooting ranges. Now how these discussions will help this researcher and his friends develop a way to explain to teen-age dropouts walking around inner-city neighborhoods with Glocks in their pockets is beyond me.
But not to worry. We’ll find this out in 2024 when the grant recipients publish an article in some ‘evidence-based’ academic journal, making sure to thank the CDC for funding their research. And that will be the end of that.
Want to reduce gun violence in the neighborhoods where it occurs? Here’s three very simple thing that can be done today:
- Hold a gun buyback not once a year, or never, but every month. The point of a buyback is not how many guns are turned in. The point is to circulate the narrative about gun violence again, and again, and again.
- Put up signage in high-violence neighborhoods which declare the area to be a ‘gun-free’ zone. Put a large sign in red letters on every corner. Don’t we put up a sign when we want motorists to slow down?
- Go to a PTA meeting and demand that the kids attend a monthly program which tells them to stay away from guns. Guns start showing up in middle schools and by the time you get to high school, it’s too late because the kids who will later commit gun violence have all dropped out.
There is not one, single community in the United States which is impacted by gun violence that has ever implemented even one of these strategies, never mind all three. And I didn’t need the CDC to award me one, single dollar to figure it out.
The fact that efforts like these aren’t happening anywhere tells me that nobody on our side really gives one rat’s damn about gun violence. And I don’t expect the other side to ever be concerned about gun violence at all.
May 03, 2022 @ 12:23:02
“…found the gun maker liable for injuries caused by his gun.”
The Washington Post published a correction in their reporting that Remington Arms accepted liability in a settlement with the Sandy Hook families. In the court filing there was no mention of liability. Their article was corrected, as one who publish correctives, will yours?
As President Obama has said; words matter.
P.S. Yes, we do put up signs when we want motorists to slow down. There are close to 93,000 tickets each day issued for speeding, that works out to 65 every minute. And as far as going to PTA meeting…you want to be put on the FBI’s terrorist watch list?
May 03, 2022 @ 14:01:51
Putting up a gun free zone on the South side of Chicago and expecting results? I just figured out how to stop the Russia v Ukraine war: put up gun free zone signs all over their borderland.
The problem as I see it is there is a porous barrier between the people who can be trusted to own guns safely and the leakage to those who can’t be trusted. Felons, gang bangers, drug dealers, spouse abusers, alcohol abusers, etc. That porous barrier will always exist. It can’t be fixed. Either you get rid of the guns, for the most part handguns, or the “wrong hands” will always find a way to get a gun.
Thing is, that “social utility of guns” model is a red herring. First, most guns never killor injure anything. They just sit in gun cases and never get used for anything other than the occasional murder of a tin can or plastic bottle or Saturday Morning at the IDPA shoot. Likewise, DGUs are relatively rare and we just don’t have data on it. Guns are ideological, not utility driven. Trying to put a social utility model on an ideological and political value is like expecting me to understand Chinese.
May 03, 2022 @ 14:44:48
I agree with your assessment that “social utility of guns” is a red herring. I have heard many in gun-control nation say the real problem is the number of guns available, or the number of guns in circulation, but it is the inability of politicians and courts to control the criminals who misuse guns. Take out inner city gang violence, and our pro rata gun violence rate could drop to 1.5 per 100,000 people, more than Switzerland but less than Liechtenstein. Mike has even said that picking up the gun counts very little, it’s all about catching and convicting the guy who used a gun to commit the crime.
May 03, 2022 @ 14:57:50
I pretty much agree. There have to be two things going on at once. One, more negative consequences for gun crimes and two, less desire to commit crimes or more specifically, gun crimes. As Dr. Webster recently quipped here, “the only thing that will stop a bullet is a job”.
May 03, 2022 @ 15:09:23
“I self-publish my books because nobody’s really interested in gun books anyway…”
They are only interested if they are of “The Armed Citizen” variety (remember the NRA monthly feature?) that detail fine, All-American boys (and some girls) slaughtering deserving underclass people, with details on bullet performance. Books like that are necessary for people having no imaginations of their own. Books for Warrior Cops are popular, too.
Once again, remember your own comments about how the gun industry figured out that hunting license sales were declining sharply, so they had to start selling “self defense.” Gun books are only one aspect of the “gun industry.” You have to know what’s selling!
Once upon a time books about white hunters on safari were big sellers. Robert Ruark or Jack O’Connor or Warren Page probably couldn’t sell a single word these days. (Seriously, how many copies of their old classics still sell?)